When it comes to exploring the dark side of humanity, thereвЂ™s no taking for granted that any one picture will offer the last word. Then you must survive survival.вЂќ Son of Saul depicts Jews forced into what the Nazis described at Nuremberg as an unparalleled form of torture-forced participation in the annihilation of your own people. As RГ¶hrig, another descendant of victims, says, вЂњFirst you must survive. After consuming endless books and movies, conducting interviews with him, and completing a graduate program at Hebrew University, the film still helped me more deeply understand the weight of what my father carried through almost seven post-war decades. With its realism, Son of Saul provides insight into the plight of survivors, including my recently deceased father-whom the Nazis forced to dig mass graves as an orphaned teenager. (The lost include my grandparents, two of their children, and countless relatives whose identities I have struggled to identify through decades of genealogical research.) And because his fate is doomed, his actions speak for the two of every three European Jews who were murdered. Instead of an incomprehensible six million fatalities beyond human understanding, Saul is relatable-even in this madness. Unlike countless other Holocaust films, there is no savior in Son of Saul.Д«y focusing on one personвЂ™s experience, Son of Saul conveys the infinite sense of loss through the finite. But when Saul finds a boy he believes is his own son, and insists on giving him a proper burial, his humanity awakens. Because the Sonderkommando were summarily executed to remove evidence of Nazi atrocities, his own demise is simply a matter of time.

SaulвЂ™s moral dilemma-to participate in the murder machine or join its victims-is a foregone conclusion.

There are only victims trapped in the killing zone. Unlike countless other Holocaust films, there is no savior here, no hero who comes to the rescue. With an over-the-shoulder view of SaulвЂ™s seemingly endless assignments, extended shots of his often silent face, largely blurred backgrounds, and an immersive wall of sound, Nemes creates a claustrophobic hell. Disappointed with existing methods and angry about what he considered EuropeвЂ™s unsatisfying response to the Holocaust, Nemes created a film within narrow parameters focused on the portrayal of one manвЂ™s surreal reality in Auschwitz.ДЄs part of the Sonderkommando, Saul (RГ¶hrig ) is forced to lead prisoners into the fictitious showers of the gas chambers. Nemes, himself the descendant of Shoah victims, discovered a French publication of actual testimonies buried at Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Sonderkommando-primarily Jewish prisoners whom the Nazis conscripted to usher their brethren into the gas chambers and crematoria.

The projectвЂ™s place in the canon of Holocaust movies begins with its backstory. Otherwise the Holocaust becomes an abstract concept and the audience can back away.вЂќ In this way, Son of Saul sets itself apart from its predecessors-revitalizing a subject at risk of losing resonance so many years later. To avoid that, he sought to вЂњplace the audience in the shoes of one person in the middle of the killing machine. вЂњI didnвЂ™t want to make a film with a distant, detached point of view,вЂќ says its director, LГЎszlГі Nemes. Now, Son of Saul is poised to join the long list of Holocaust-related dramas the Academy has feted, including The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), The Shop on Main Street (1966), The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971), SophieвЂ™s Choice (1982), SchindlerвЂ™s List (1993), The Pianist (2002), The Reader (2008), and Ida (2014).Д«ut it would be a mistake to simply categorize Son of Saul (originally titled Saul fia) as yet another award-worthy Holocaust film in a critical but some might say fatigued genre. The 50 Best Podcasts of 2021 Laura Jane Standley and Eric McQuade

Son of saul oscar